One million milestone for Cummins

384826 Sep 2011Product

One million milestone for Cummins

Cummins factory in Darlington has passed the one million milestone for mid-range engine production this month. “It took 22 years to get to 750,000 engines, but only another four to reach one million,” says plant manager Mike McCabe. “Our employees should be proud of this achievement given the challenging economic conditions that we have faced over the last few years. This is as much a recognition of their efforts in improving productivity and quality to remain competitive in difficult circumstances, as well as the actual number of engines produced.”

The factory originally opened in 1965 as a joint venture with Chrysler, building the Small Vee family of V6 and V8 engines. In the mid-1980’s Cummins switched production to the new B Series mid-range engine with a factory upgrade costing £13.5million. This represented a significant new investment beyond the company’s traditional heavy duty truck engine business. The engine was developed with a flexible design making it suitable for a wide variety of applications including truck, bus, material handling, construction, agriculture, marine, military and power generation. Originally available in a 6-cylinder 5.9 litre and 4-cylinder 3.9 litre configurations, it enabled Cummins to forge partnerships with major equipment manufacturers, many of which continue today.